Passenger ship manifests for emigrants leaving from Göteborg (1869-1951), Malmö (1874-1939) and Stockholm (1869-1940) ports are available on ArkivDigital. Also, you will find passenger lists for persons leaving from Helsingborg and passport journals (passjournaler) for persons traveling from Norrköping both in and outside of Sweden. You will find these records in the police archives by doing the following:

While most of the passenger ship manifests and lists are not name searchable, there are name registers for the following years for passengers leaving from Göteborg: 1871, 1894, 1895 and 1896. Also, there are name registers for persons leaving from Malmö for the years: 1887, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1894 and 1895.

The emigrant registers for Göteborg are listed in alphabetical order both in last name and first name order. Below is the emigrant register for 1871 for Göteborg showing Jöns Svensson age 46 leaving from Unnaryd with the destination of St. Paul departing 9 June 1871 followed by the source code.

The format of the source code for Mälmo differs from the source code for Göteborg. Below is the emigrant register for Mälmo for the year 1888 showing Botilla P. Månsdotter age 25 leaving from Backaryd going to Chicago on the 31st of May 1888.

ArkivDigital has now reached another milestone: over 100 million register posts are now searchable! Since the beginning of the year, 13 million register posts have been added which means that the number of register posts has increased from 88 million to 101 million.

Register posts have been added to the following search indexes:

The Population of Sweden 1860-1920 has been expanded to include the years 1921 to 1930 and thus the name of the index has been changed to the Population of Sweden 1860 – 1930. See earlier blog.

The inventory of estate index additions includes posts for Göteborg-och-Bohus, Värmland, and Älvsborg counties. See earlier blog.

The birth, marriage and death indexes addition include posts from Nyköping and the surrounding areas. See earlier blog.

Searching in the estate inventory register

The distribution of the register posts is as follows (rounded numbers):

Population of Sweden 1950 – 7 million posts

Population of Sweden 1960 – 7.5 million posts

Population of Sweden 1860-1930 – 84 million posts

Inventory of estate – 1 million posts

Swedes in the US 1940 – 500,000 posts

Portrait collection – 100,000 posts

Birth index, parts of Södermanland – 300,000 posts

Marriage index, parts of Södermanland – 100,000 posts

Death index, parts of Södermanland – 200,000 posts

The Population of Sweden 1950 is available for all subscribers. The other registers are only available in the All-in-one subscription. Several of the registers are only available in the web version of our application program, which you will find here: https://app.arkivdigital.se.

We now have 118 archives in our Nebraska collection. Most of these archives are Swedish American congregation records but not all are church records. One interesting collection in the Nebraska archives consists of declarations of intention, petitions for naturalization and final papers for United States citizenship. These records are from the District Court of Polk County in Osceola, Nebraska.

The process for United States citizenship was generally a two-step process. After a person lived in the U.S. for two years, the person could file a “declaration of intention” to become a citizen. After three additional years, the person could file a petition for naturalization. After the petition was granted, the person was given a certification of naturalization and became a citizen. Click here for more information about the naturalization process.

These applications for citizenship primarily the “declaration of intention” are often used to help a person identify where their ancestor came from in Sweden. Below is the declaration of intention for Axel Theodore Norstrom.

The “declaration of intention” includes such information as physical description, age, occupation, birth date and birth place, emigration place, often name of ship along with date of arrival and arrival port.

In the above record dated 18th of January 1909 we see that Axel was born in Skinnskatteberg parish in Sweden on the 10th of September 1863. He is now living in Stromsberg, Nebraska. The record states that he emigrated from Göteborg, Sweden on the ship, Arabic, and arrived in the port of Boston, Massachusetts on the 14th of October 1905. His last residence in Sweden is Malma. (Note – in the declaration of intention it looks like Malmo but as we do more research, we discover that the last residence in Sweden is in the parish of Malma in Västmanland county).

With the above information, we can jump into the Swedish church book records and verify the information on the declaration of intention. We can search for the birth books for Skinnskatteberg parish and look for his birth record in 1863. Below is his birth record.

We can follow him in the household books from the time of his birth until his emigration. Below is the household record showing him emigrating from Malma parish in Västmanland county to America in 1905. You notice that his Swedish name is “Axel Teodor Norström” and the American version is ” Axel Theodore Norstrom”.

We will be an exhibitor at the Nebraska State Genealogy Society’s 41st Annual Conference in Columbus, Nebraska, on April 27-28, 2018.

Kathy Meade of ArkivDigital will give a presentation on ArkivDigital on Saturday, April 28th at 11 AM. Part of the presentation will highlight the recently added collection of Nebraska records which consists primarily of Swedish American church books but also a collection of declaration of intentions for U.S. citizenship from the District Court of Polk County court house.